Morton “Morty” Savada, a record retailer, collector, and scholar, well known among jazz fans and record buffs, died Monday evening at 85.

For the first 25 years of his professional career, Savada was President of Savada Bros., his family’s apparel store catering to young men.

Then, for 30 years, he owned and operated Records Revisited in the shadow of the Empire State Building on West 34th Street. This was among the last stores in New York where one could just walk in off the street and buy a classic 78 RPM record. Savada opened the store in the final decade of the vinyl LP, then kept it going throughout the years of the Compact Disc and even into the era of the download.

For any collector looking for a rarity, historian working on a research project, or a reissue producer in search of something so rare it wasn’t even in the vault, Records Revisited was generally the first call to make.

Savada specialized in filling gaps and finding vintage single tracks that had never been reissued in any of the long-playing formats. Savada regularly collected 78 collectors together for lunches and bull-sessions. His shop off of Herald Square was hub of such activity, where younger aficionados of old music picked up folklore in addition to the discs themselves.

Born in 1923, Savada served in the Army Signal Corps from 1943-1946 and graduated from Cornell University in 1944.

Mr. Friedwald is the Sun’s jazz critic.